


Happy To Call This Home

by blackorchids



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Abandonment, Communication, Coping, Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Dysfunctional Family, Established Relationship, Family, Gen, Healthy Relationships, Intimacy, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Neglect, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV William "Dex" Poindexter, Partnership, Surprises, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 01:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14630925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: With Parents' Weekend rapidly approaching, Nursey falls deeper and deeper in a slump after finding out his parents will be missing it for the third year in a row. Luckily, Dex is handling it.





	Happy To Call This Home

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this idea in my head for, like, two years or something and it's taken me, like, two months to even get it written. it's somewhat less silly than i expected, but that's life, i guess.
> 
> title from the song _home_ , by nick jonas

Okay, so it takes Dex a few years to notice. He’s got plenty of excuses lined up in case of the world-ending chance that someone actually asks him: their first year, everyone had been distracted with the discovery that Bad Bob Zimmermann and his lovely wife were genuinely great people, and, as a sophomore, he’d been too embarrassed with his kid sister’s blatant crush on Ransom to pay much attention to the fact that Nursey was flitting back and forth between Bitty and his mama and Chowder and the entire clan of equally Sharks-obsessed Chows.

But when they’re juniors and Bitty and Ford remind them after a particularly gruelling practice about the upcoming Parents’ Night In that’s three weeks out, Dex is already more or less watching Nursey, because Nursey had pulled up the bottom of his slouchy white _The Future Is Non-Binary_ tank to wipe his face clean of sweat, and Dex really tries to pay less attention to Derek Nurse’s abs, but he’s not infallible and it’s early as fuck.

Anyway, Ford is answering Tango’s question about lodging and Bitty is consulting some of the newest taddies about parental allergens and _no one but Dex_ seems to notice that the line of Nursey’s back is taut and the grimace pulling at his mouth is uncomfortable.

He knocks Chowder’s shoulder in goodbye and catches up to Nursey after team breakfast, elbowing him in the side _bro-ishly_ for leaving without waiting.

“Excited for another rousing lecture about women in wartime?” Nurse asks as they circle the lake. From anyone else, the question would sound sarcastic, but this dork is genuinely chomping at the bit at the thought of his and Dex’s only shared class, a compromise in Bro-titude they’d agreed on towards the end of the previous year. Dex is still a little annoyed that his side of the compromise is war, but the joke stings far less than it would’ve when they were freshmen, so he generally doesn’t bring it up.

“Titillated,” is how he replies, just so Nursey has a reason to jostle him back: making fun of Nursey’s word of the day calendar in their room is always an easy shot. They trade more synonyms for excited back and forth, each following word more and more of a stretch until they’re arguing about whether _juiced up_ is referring to alcohol or ‘roids as they shove each other through the doorway of the classroom.

Their professor is talking about lesbians in the military, which Dex is actually kind of interested in, when he remembers that he’d wanted to ask Nursey about parents’ night. He stops typing in their shared google doc of notes and hits enter a few times for a fresh line. His bolded _hey man what’re your parent night plans_ ends up in the middle of Nursey’s rambling paragraph describing the photo up on the projector screen, thanks to g-docs and their trusty glitches, and Nurse startles a little before stiffening up pretty unsubtly as he reads it.

 _u kno the sheiks bro, they’re busy af_ shows up at the top of the document, squished in between Nursey’s “clever” title line of _Baddies and Bombs_.

 _they’re not coming?_ Dex types, at random, resisting the urge to write a passive-aggressive _again_ to his question.

 _nah, was thinking i’d just hang w mags_ Nursey replies, twisting around in his seat to shoot Will a leer after name-droppping Dex’s teenaged sister. Obviously, Dex has to throw something at him, and obviously Dr. Martinez kicks him out for behaving like a child. Dex isn’t even out of the door when she kicks Nursey out too, likely for the loud-ass raspberry he’d blown when Dex flipped him off.

“A free afternoon!” Nursey crows, and Dex lets him avoid the topic for the next few hours, the pair of them deciding to work on the most recent paper to try and get back into Professor Martinez’s good graces. Nursey suggests the Haus, but Dex knows Bitty is spending the next few days planning a menu for parents’ night so he has ample time to buy all of the necessary ingredients (and also enough time to rope a bunch of taddies into scrubbing it top to bottom), so he suggests Annie’s instead, and doesn’t make a peep when Nursey pays for their muffins and coffees.

“Character growth,” Nursey says, instead of letting it go, and so Dex licks his muffin, cracking up when Nursey squawks in disgust.

In what might be _actual_ character growth, Dex lets the issue lay, for the time being. Instead of _pushing, pushing, pushing_ , he gets the pair of them going on a conversation about older television shows, playing aggressive footsie under the table and folding his napkin into a paper balloon, which is the only shape he remembers from his middle school origami phase. The conversation is well underway when he sets the final distraction trap: “Ross would be a great addition on Star Trek.”

Nursey upends his soy-vanilla-bean-with-chocolate-chunks-and-two-pumps-of-peppermint-syrup latte frappuccino monstrosity in his haste to demonstrate how completely appalled he is.

After depositing Nursey at the front steps of the building where his afternoon poetry workshop takes place, Dex makes with the hustle and practically jogs to Founders’, bypassing the first floor entirely so he can get a table by the window on the second floor, where he can plug in his rickety laptop.

So. Nursey’s parents are bowing out of Parents’ Night. With Nursey across campus, Dex feels safe in scornfully adding an _again_ to his thoughts, because it’s their third year and the Nurses have not yet managed to make time to visit their son for a weekend and watch him play some hockey. Will needs to come up with something to do that will simultaneously prevent Derek from feeling abandoned by his parents _or_ pitied by the team. 

Dex thinks about involving Bitty, team captain and local mom friend, or even Chowder, who is their actual other best friend, but two and a half years of knowing Derek Nurse means he’s fully aware of how little Nursey actually wants his piles of issues public knowledge.

It puts a little twist of warmth in the pit of Dex’s belly to remember that he’s not considered public anymore. It takes a few minutes of gormless smiling at his physics homework before he manages to get himself back on track. In the place where he should’ve been writing down differential equations, he’s written Nursey’s full damn name down a few times in embarrassingly loopy handwriting, as well as the word _plan_ in huge block letters with a handful of question marks after it. 

With a resigned sigh, Dex sets aside the worksheet so he can recycle it later, turning to his clunky laptop and accepting that he’s going to have to dish out another quarter to print a new page that he can turn in without dying of mortification.

As he scrolls through the class forum, his eye catches on another open tab and Dex’s heart basically stutters in his chest. _Could it be that easy?_

“Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg,” he mumbles to himself, before flushing self-consciously when he notices a few girls at the next table looking over at him curiously.

*

The closer they get to Parents’ Night Out, the more _chill_ Nursey becomes, talking in slow, measured sentences that have minimal inflection, which matches quite well with how completely expressionless his Generic Pleasant Smile seems, now that Will’s used to Nursey expressing a wide variety of facial olympics.

The pair of them spend less time then they ever have at the Haus, despite finally living there officially. Instead, Dex lays on his belly, spread across an old blanket laid out nearby to whichever pile of leaves Nursey’s camped out in, and the two of them talk about what kind of house they’d like to live in after graduation. Every time they have this conversation, their answers seem to match up more and more, and the implications of that make Will smile down at his terrible Calculus homework so he can avoid smiling at Nursey too much, lest he get called out for being the sap he truly is.

Nursey knows though, because how could he not, and, more often than not, he deigns to abandon his pile of leaves so he can squish up close and personal with Dex on a Granny Poindexter Original quilt, his heavy frame pressing Dex’s down into the soft grass and earth so they can lay close, just enjoying the simple intimacy of being together. 

Eventually, Nursey gets bored of laying atop Dex’s back and starts idly grinding against Dex’s ass, pressing absentminded kisses to the nape of Dex’s neck, the seduction so much more laid back than it had been when they’d first started and everything was so intense it almost hurt.

Will likes this better, he thinks privately. Knows Nursey agrees with him because Nursey’s stopped writing so many poems about natural disasters and started writing about wonders of the world, trading Pompeii for the Grand Canyon, imagery that Dex still only sort of gets. 

However Nursey would describe it, though, eventually his grinding becomes too much for laying on a blanket in the middle of campus during a busy early evening, so Dex pushes him away and he goes long enough to let Dex clean up, watching with hooded, warm green eyes that encourage Will to skip organizing his papers and folding the quilt and instead just stuff it all in his bag. 

No one looks at them twice when they tumble through the Haus front door, holding hands and tugging one another through the living room and up the stairs with scarcely a greeting, detouring to the kitchen to stuff a few bills in the Sin Bin before shutting themselves in their shared room, safe from talk about parents and safe from interruptions.

Nursey takes off his shirt, and Dex is still as enamoured with Derek Nurse’s abs as he had been as a frog, so it all sort of dissolves into giggly, hot sex from there, which has the added bonus of distracting Derek past the point of being able to remember that Parents’ Night In weekend is starting the following day. 

When they wake up, Dex can already tell that Nursey’s creeping towards one of his bad days, so he fires off an email to the professor of his only Friday class and tells him he needs to miss. Past Dex is screaming at the thought of missing so many hours of school in a single week, especially when he’s got a game the following night, but current Dex has fought hard to learn that, sometimes, very occasionally, there are more important things than grades and hockey. Not often, because he’s still a double scholarship student, but he can afford to miss a day in a programming class he’s got a low level A in.

After he sends the email, the satisfying permanence of the swoosh noise his phone makes loud in the quiet of the room, he turns it back off, leaving it on the floor, and rolls around in bed, pulling the purple duvet on Nursey’s bed up over both of their heads and just laying as close to Derek as possible, resisting the urge to hug him because he knows Nurse doesn’t like feeling restrained when he’s like this.

“Don’t you have class?” Nursey asks, like he doesn’t have Dex’s schedule memorized down to the hour.

“Nah,” is all Dex says, and Derek closes his eyes again, purple rings under them visible despite his dark skin and the dim lighting. Very slowly, Nursey reaches out one hand and links their pinkies, holding on tight to that tiny connection, and Dex relaxes more deeply against the mattress, ready to settle in for the long haul. 

Nursey is completely dead to the world when Dex ventures down stairs to find some water bottles and maybe toast some slices of Bitty’s rye bread. Chowder and his mom are the only ones in the kitchen, and he lets himself be hugged by Dr. Chow, catches up with her with genuine interest, tells them that Nursey’s having _a lie in_ , which has understanding sparking through Chowder’s expression and he manages to wrap up the conversation in the next few minutes, tossing Dex a few tangerines to go with his toast and hydrating methods.

It’s a trip to balance his loot up the rickety fourth stair that he still hasn’t managed to find anything wrong with, and he sort of nudges the handle of their shared room open with his knee, kicking it shut behind him as quietly as he can.

Despite his care, Nursey is already awake, face peeking out from his burrito of blankets, watching Dex tiredly as Dex scoots over the roll-y desk chair and uses a heavy textbook to create a stable table-top for his plate of toast, stack of oranges, bottles of water, and hot thermos of the gross, mint tea Nursey sometimes uses as a pickmeup. 

“As I live and breathe,” Derek says half heartedly and Dex scoffs a little, knows he’s clumsy-but-getting-better at being gentle enough during these days, sits down on the bed next to him. 

“We gotta eat a few carbs before we can turn on Brooklyn Nine Nine,” Dex says, and Derek’s expression says he agrees but isn’t happy about it.

The afternoon is a little better, enough so that Dex doesn’t protest when Nursey says he’s good to go to the first of three team family meals. They hold hands down the stairs and through the back door, only letting go when the rickety picnic table comes into view, so as to avoid fines.

Nursey sits a little closer to Dex than he usually would, and the pair of them are a little quieter than they usually are, but the smile on Derek’s face is real, and when Dex’s ma and sisters finally show up towards the end of the meal, having had to wait for his mother to get out of work before they could start the drive, he’s the first one to notice them and get up to greet them, offering hugs all around and fetching some more chairs from the basement while Dex gets tackled by Lizzie and Maggie.

“You boys doing okay?” Dex’s mom asks them after dinner, when Lizzie and Maggie are preoccupied with playing Mario Cart against some of the other little sibs that have showed up for family weekend. There are a lot of kids and teenagers in this run-down frat house, and even though Dex and Bitty have put a lot of work into making it more homey and _safe_ , it’s still a tight fit, and Ollie’s mom is not the only one eying the accommodations with some level of unease.

“Yeah, classes are going good, hockey is going well,” Dex says. “We’re starting to get used to living with each other.”

“It wouldn’t have taken so long, but Will snores like a chainsaw, you see,” Nursey says, coming into the room with glasses of water for Dex’s sisters and a glass of surprisingly good wine for Dex’s mom. “Smelly, too.”

Lizzie and Maggie crack up at that, the pair of them looking up at Nursey with something close to stars in their eyes, and Dex would scoff, but he’s man enough to acknowledge that _sometimes_ he has that very same expression when looking at Nursey. Not when the guy is chirping the shit out of him in front of his mom and sisters, of course.

Of course.

“I always found his handiness around the house more than made up for the smell,” his mom says conspiratorially, and Dex is so offended he chokes on his gatorade, ears burning when Nursey lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree with glee.

The night passes in similar fashion, more and more parents bowing out to head to the temporary accommodations in one of the graduate dorm buildings or nearby hotels, and Nursey is unfailingly charming and engaging with _the most important ladies in Dex’s life_ , enough so that Dex is sort of absentmindedly daydreaming about the pair of them going up to Maine to visit in the future, burgeoning family traditions and the like.

The pair of them had painstakingly cleaned up and aired out their shared room earlier that evening, making up the bunk beds for Dex’s sisters and blowing up the too-expensive, fancy-as-shit air mattress for Dex’s mom, so when Maggie starts dozing more than playing, Dex shows the three of them up to the bedroom while Nursey helps Bitty clear up the remnants of dessert in the kitchen.

Chowder and the Chows are already tucked away in Chowder’s room, another air mattress set up parallel to the bed and Chowder and Nursey’s semi-permanent blanket fort in the corner probably serving as a third sleep-space, so Maggie and Lizzie get the shared bathroom to themselves, and Dex’s mom coos over how _lived in_ and _homey_ the room looks compared to how it had looked on early move-in day. She hugs him for a little longer than normal, familiar and warm and so completely comforting that Dex feels about a third of his stress just pack up and take off. 

“He’s a good boy,” Dex’s mom says, like Dex doesn’t already know his mom likes Nursey. There’s something sad in her expression though, and Dex knows she hadn’t missed that Nursey’s just about the only one on the team who didn’t have family visiting or set to come out for the game the following night.

She ruffles his hair in that embarrassing, wonderful mom way, and leans up on her toes to kiss him on the forehead, and Dex can hear her old mantra from when he’d first outgrew her: _tall, like your father_ even though she doesn’t say it anymore.

“I’m gonna marry him, Ma,” Dex tells her, on a whim, even though he’s thought about saying it to her since he and Nursey first started dating.

“Good.”

*

“It’s a good thing y’all don’t want to play professionally,” Chowder says, rolling his eyes when Nursey and Dex both fine him for the y’all, synchronized perfectly. “I can’t even imagine how that would turn out, since your pregame rituals _involve each other_.” The _you dumbasses_ is implied, because Chris would never actually call them that, but he’s smirking a little anyway, like Dex hasn’t already banged his head against his locker half a dozen times at the same realization.

“They’re not rituals, because I’m not superstitious,” is what Dex says instead. No one even dignifies that with a response, and Chowder goes back to his own rituals so that Dex and Nursey can go back to bickering about musical theatre vs Disney movies, all while taping up each other’s sticks half dressed. Nursey’s spent the whole afternoon playing with his fidget cube and Dex already laced his skates up too tightly from nerves, albeit from two completely opposite ends of the spectrum, and Dex honestly can’t wait for parents’ weekend to just be over so they can all go back to being nervous about the game and not everything else.

Nursey and Will jostle each other the whole duration of Coach Hall’s speech, but Dex knows it’s entirely muscle memory at this point. Once they get on the ice, everything will melt away and they’ll play some damn good hockey, but Dex is worried about having stepped out of line, and Nursey has been dreading this game for weeks.

It’s a bruiser of a game, but Nursey gets a slap shot off of Dex’s pass in third quarter and Bitty is on fire, skating faster than ever, and Dex can’t even feel his bruised ribs when the buzzer goes off, because the adrenaline of winning the game and his surprise for Nursey is so intense he’s basically floating on autopilot through the handshaking and changing in the locker room.

Nursey finishes showering and getting dressed first, and Dex sees his expression when he gets back to their neighboring lockers, can already guess at what Nursey’s about to say. 

“I’m thinking I might bow out of the hashtag fam dinner tonight, Poindexter,” he says as Will struggles into his jeans, legs still damp.

“Don’t say hashtag out loud,” Dex says, knee jerk, and then he turns halfway to frown at Nursey dead-on, who’s already shouldering his bag. “And especially don’t do it to distract me from a bigger picture.”

Chowder and Bitty leave them to it.

“I’m just not feeling the _I dream of white suburbia_ tee-emm, tonight.” Nursey shrugs, and Dex completely ignores the trademark meme reference because he has learned to not push so much, but sometimes Nursey _needed_ a gentle nudge.

“Just come with me to say goodnight, then,” Dex says, hoping he doesn’t sound as desperate as he feels. If Nursey were in on the plan, he’d be gasping _foiled, again_ like a comic book villain, but then, if Nursey were in on the plan, he wouldn’t be trying to get out of dinner.

Or, maybe he would. When Dex had woken up that morning, he’d wondered, errantly, if he was crossing a boundary, and then he’d been entirely unable to stop wondering.

Honestly, it’s a shock they won the game at all. 

Nursey sighs but consents to follow Dex out to say goodnight to the girls, and Will really couldn’t have planned it any more perfectly: Dex’s mom and sisters are blocking entirely from view Dex’s secret guest, well enough that Derek doesn’t even notice there’s more than three people loitering around, waiting for the pair of them.

But eventually they’re close enough that he _does_ notice, and he stumbles to a stop, mouth falling open at the same instant that his bag slips from his shoulder to catch on the crook of his elbow.

“ _Mijo_ ,” says Nursey’s old nanny, a younger-than-Dex-expected woman with two thick braids down her skull, the ends of which reach nearly to her waist. “Why wouldn’t you invite me to family night?”

Nursey stumbles closer, mouth still open in pure surprise, and he nearly trips over his own grounded hockey bag, only remaining upright because Dex catches him by the belt-loop on his jeans. He’s so distracted that he lets Dex take the second bag, making his way towards Laura in a daze. 

When he gets close enough, she yanks him the rest of the way and hugs him tight, making him stoop down so she can press her palms against either side of his face and kiss his cheeks and forehead in what looks like a familiar gesture.

Dex’s mom and sisters step out of the way, heading over to where Dex is waiting.

“We’ll go to dinner in a sec,” he tells them, but his mom waves off any sarcastic comments Maggie and Lizzie might have made.

“We’ve got time, baby,” she says, and Maggie and Lizzie settle on the nearby bench, Maggie texting, and Lizzie pulling out math homework like she’s _trying_ to get chirped for being another too-studious Poindexter in a long line of dorky Maine-natives. Across the way, Nursey and Laura are speaking in low, rapid-fire Spanish, and Nursey hasn’t yet stepped out of Laura’s personal bubble. More and more of the guys are leaving to catch up with their own families, because they’d more or less agreed to smaller, more personal dinners than another team dinner, and eventually everyone else has gone.

It’s a little bit after when Nursey seems to realize they have an audience, and it’s hard to tell with his dark skin, but Dex knows from experience that he’s blushing.

“Poindexters,” he says, like he has manners, “this is Laura Garcia. Laur, this is Dex and his mom, Bridget, and his two sisters, Maggie and Lizzie.”

“ _This_ is Dex,” Laura says and Nursey elbows her. It’s too early for chirping, but Dex hopes they all get to a point where he can tease the shit out of Nurse for having apparently gossiped about him to his nanny.

Luckily, Laura is better at socializing than either Dex or Nursey, and though she and Nursery both clearly don’t want to separate too far, she leads the group of them out of the back of the rink, smoothly segueing into conversation with Maggie and Lizzie about school.

The dinner passes in even more of a haze than the game had, Derek crouched small up against Laura’s side, her arm across his shoulders as the six of them go through a truly terrifying amount of Italian food. Dex’s mom helps carry the conversation way more than Dex does, and he’s going to have to thank her later, but he’s too preoccupied with watching Nursey to try and parse out if he’d crossed a line or not. 

After dinner, they separate, so Nursey and Laura can have some more time alone to catch up, headed towards the lake. Despite protests on all ends, the plan had always been for Dex’s mom and sisters to leave at the end of the night, so they’ll be back in Maine early enough to have a lazy day of recoup before school on Monday, and Dex hugs his sisters and his mom tight, breath caught in his throat when he thinks about not seeing them again until Thanksgiving.

“My sweet boy,” she says when she finally pulls away from him, which she used to say when he was _really_ small, and Dex knows she’s noticed something’s finally settled in him. “You be good,” she tells him. She used to have a whole mantra about focusing on school and staying safe, but he knows she’s decided he knows that without being told. She surprises him when she grips him by his upper arms instead of pulling away the rest of the way. “You treat that boy of yours right,” she says sternly, and Dex has to hug her again, because he knows his dad has been on all of their minds tonight.

“You know I will,” he says finally. “I learned from you.”

Dex is brushing his teeth in the shared bathroom an hour or so later when Nursey steps in and closes the door after him. His usually unruly curls have been captured and braided down into a similar style that Laura had been wearing, showing off the smooth fade on the sides and back of his head.

He looks good as hell, Dex thinks, but it’s not the time for that, since he still doesn’t know if Nursey’s pissed or not.

“She’s coming to the game next week,” Nursey says after they’ve stared at each other for a few moments and he’s loaded his toothbrush up with Crest: Ultra-Whitening. His voice is a little wondering, and he abruptly turns to look Will in the eye again, toothbrush hanging from his hand. 

“How did you know?” Nursey asks.

“You’ve mentioned her a couple times,” Dex says promptly. “I found her on facebo—”

Nursey interrupts him to lunge forward and catch Dex’s mouth in a hard kiss. He’s panting hard when he pulls away a few seconds later, and his eyes look a little wild and a lot vulnerable.

“Thank you for knowing to do that for me,” Nursey says in a practiced, calm voice, still standing close. With the braids in, his cheekbones look even more unreal and Dex _loves_ him.

“I’m in your corner,” Dex manages, proud of his own steady voice. “I got you.”

Nursey studies him a little longer, and Dex already knows he’s going to be woken up in the middle of the night by the light of Nursey’s phone illuminating the tiny notebook that Derek uses to get his thoughts sorted. As suddenly as he’d moved to kiss Dex, he steps away and starts brushing his teeth. Dex would think he imagined the whole exchange, if not for the tiny smile curling up one of Nursey’s cheeks, despite the toothpaste.

Dex knocks his shoulder against Nursey’s companionably, the two of them finishing off their night routines in comfortable silence. That’s Parents’ Night Weekend sorted, then. Good.

**Author's Note:**

> hands down one of my top fav ships. tell me why i'm wrong on [tumblr](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!!


End file.
